Berylouise Mitchell Photography
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WWI: Mementos of our Grandfathers

A blog over 52 weeks dedicated to my two grandfathers who both served in WWI. It commenced on 29 January 2017.

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Lithgow Small Arms Factory celebrates a century of production

22/6/2017

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I met and photographed Tony Griffiths at the centenary celebrations for the Lithgow Small Arms Factory in 2012.  A staff member pointed Tony out to me and offered to get me a copy of his two volume history of the factory.  At the time I was focused on finding out whether my grandmother’s brother-in-law was working in Lithgow in 1911?  I thought I might find some clues in Tony’s comprehensive history of the Lithgow SAF.

As my great aunt Gladys’s son Kenneth was born in the Imperial Hotel Lithgow in 1911, I’ve always wondered what on earth they were doing there?  Perhaps her husband was working on the building of the factory?  The other two main industries in Lithgow at the time were the steelworks and coal mining, so it’s impossible to prove one way or the other.  Their marriage didn’t last long in any case.  She left him after an incident when he reportedly fired a gun!  Then married an American and moved to California.  Sadly Kenneth was killed in a car accident in Oregon at just 25 years old.

The following is an abbreviated version of the factory’s history borrowed from the Lithgow Small Arms Museum’s website.

The South African Boer War campaign of 1901 highlighted Australia’s isolation from British munitions and armament supplies.  The newly federated government was alerted to the possible serious shortages of supply in future conflicts, now that it was responsible for the country’s defence. So the Government resolved to make Australia independent of British munitions and armament supplies, and in 1907 the decision was made to establish a factory for the manufacture of small arms in Australia.

Lithgow was chosen as the site of the new factory as the town was already serviced by road and rail. It had a thriving iron works, coal, and limestone, and was protected by its location in the western foothills of the Blue Mountains.  Tenders were called for the supply of a complete plant for the manufacture of small arms and accoutrements.  The rifle to be manufactured was the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE), the standard military weapon of British and Empire forces.  And despite three other tenders from British companies the American machine tool company Pratt & Whitney at Hartford, Connecticut, was chosen.

The outstanding precision and modern machines of Pratt & Whitney who were not a firearms manufacturing company, but who made machine tools capable of producing any component requiring repetitive precision manufacture, made them a controversial choice.  However, they offered the quicker delivery time of 1 year and lower production time and costs. 

During a demonstration at Pratt & Whitney a rifle was built in 22 hours and 36.5 minutes under the contract time of 28 man hours per rifle). The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield took 72 man hours and Birmingham Small Arms Factory 42 man hours. 

The factory opened for business on 9 June 1912, but with the sudden onset of WWI in July 1914 the fledgling factory was still not up to its full production potential of 20,000 rifles per year.  Only 13,800 were delivered to the Army between July 1913 and July 1914.  During the war employment at the factory peaked at just over 1,500 men.  Between August 1913 and July 1918 almost 100,000 Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles and accessories were produced at Lithgow.

Lithgow at the time was unsewered, with dirt roads, and public transport was virtually non-existent. Lithgow's long cold winters led to miserable conditions when added to the huge strain on the town's existing services, and the critical shortage of accommodation. People were living in appalling conditions, small over-crowded, sometimes condemned houses, tents and even crude humpies.  And conditions became worse as the war progressed.

Following WWI Lithgow suffered the pain of severe decline as employment was lost from the Factory, the coal mines, steelworks and shale oil works, and employment had reduced to just over 300 men by mid-1922.

Eventually the Government ordered the Factory to copy the expensive imported shearing combs and cutters used in the wool industry and thereby saved Australia's most valuable export industry.  The factory began making sophistocated SAF-LOK handcuffs in 1934 and is still making them today.

SMLE rifle production ceased in 1929 and resumed in 1934.  From 1937 the Factory had been making around 30,000 SMLE rifles per year. At the outbreak of war in 1939 the demand rose to 100,000 per year, increasing again in early 1941 to 200,000 per year. On top of this was the increased demand for Bren light machine guns and Vickers machine guns, Lithgow being the only manufacturer of the Vickers outside of Britain at this time.

The factory struggled to cope with not only the increase of production for the Australian Army, but also pleas for weapons from Britain and other Commonwealth countries.  Following the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 the British Government requested that all available Australian weapons be sent to Britain to replace losses.

By the end of 1942 employment at the Lithgow factory had grown to around 6000 with a further 6000 people employed at the various feeder factories. Once again the services of Lithgow were placed under huge strain. The perennial problem of accommodation in Lithgow meant that some families even camped in tents in the nearby pine forest without water or sanitation. Weekly production of 4000 rifles, 150 Bren guns, and 50 Vickers machine guns was achieved during this period.

As the war effort depleted the pool of available men, women were employed for the first time in large numbers, with many women seconded from other factories. The efforts of the woman workers often exceeded expectations and earned the respect of management.  It was sometimes noted that women could do a job better than men. Women barrel setters were so skilled that they earned higher than normal wages.

After WWII the Factory manufactured parts for locomotives and rolling stock.  They went on to manufacture other commercial products including:  refrigerator and Sunbeam Mixmaster parts, film projector spares, handcuffs, Slazenger golf club heads, and the old turn-handle pencil sharpeners. Lithgow SAF was also both retailer and wholesaler of its own Zircaloy brand open-ended, ring and adjustable spanners, and then in 1950 Pinnock sewing machines entered production.  They went on to produce Slazenger sporting rifles, including the famous .22.  Although it had spent most of its life trying to survive, the Factory developed a very fine reputation for the quality of its workmanship and the training of its workers.

In 1982 the Army began the search for a new rifle and once again the Factory lived on the promise of regeneration.  In December 1985 it was announced that the Factory would be building the new Steyr Assault rifle and Minimi light machine gun.

Copies of Tony Griffith’s books can be found at the museum.  Tony also researched and wrote extensively about indigenous WWI veteran Douglas Grant featured in my  blog of 5 June.

For more information on the history of the Lithgow SAF check out the Lithgow Small Arms Factory museum and the Lithgow Arms website links below:

http://www.lithgowsafmuseum.org.au/history.html
​

http://www.lithgowarms.com/about-us/
 

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Ted Ferguson & the Enfield Rifle

19/6/2017

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In 2012 I was fortunate to visit the Lithgow Small Arms Factory for their centenary celebration.  At the time I was working for Thales Australia who owns and runs the factory and I was there to document the event photographically.

The Hon Jason Clare MP, the then Federal Minister for Defence Materiel, attended to officially unveil the centenary plaque.  Other notable guests came from Steyr in Austria and from the Australian Army.  For me the most important person there was Ted Ferguson, who had worked for the Lithgow factory for 50 years, and had served as a very young man in WWII. 

Ted is pictured above talking with local media during the centenary event about the Small Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, the first weapon ever manufactured at Lithgow.  The rifle on display during the celebration was one of the original batch of riles manufactured at Lithgow and was donated for the event.  The Enfield was used by Australian soldiers in all major WWI battles except Gallipoli.

Between August 1913 and July 1918 almost 100,000 Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles and accessories were produced at Lithgow.


After retirement Ted volunteered at the Lithgow Small Arms Museum, located in the grounds of the factory, where I’m sure he had many wonderful memories and stories to share of his long service with the factory.  Ted’s greatest disappointment though was that his 50 year tenure of employment was not officially recognised due to the changes from being a government owned factory, then a government enterprise that was then sold into private ownership. 

Sadly I learned while researching Ted’s story for this project that he had passed away about 2 years ago.   Lest we forget!

Ted is pictured below at the celebration holding the factory’s latest concept rifle the F90, known by the Australian Army as EF88.
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As part of the centenary celebrations the VIP guests were taken to the live firing range at Lithgow SAF and were able to fire the new F90 rifle at balloon targets quite some distance away.  I was there taking the photos and at the very end of their session I was asked if I would like to try?   I hit the last remaining balloon on my second shot.  I had never fired a weapon before!
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The Hon Jason Clare MP, then Federal Minister for Defence Materiel, official guest at the centenary celebration of the Lithgow Small Arms Factory in October 2012.  On the left is Chris Jenkins, Thales Australia CEO.  The official opening date of the factory was in June, but due to the usual cold winter conditions, the company chose to hold the ceremony in springtime.
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WWI Anti-German sentiment: Hanover St changes to Walker St in Waterloo

13/6/2017

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Early subdivision of what is now known as Waterloo by George R Whiting, my great great grandfather.  Map provided by Dr Lisa Murray and sourced from the National Library of Australia

From the 1850s German settlers began arriving in the Australian colonies to escape the rising nationalist sentiment in Germany, they wanted to start a new life.  For the majority of German settlers Port Adelaide was the point of arrival.  From there they moved onto Western Australia, the Barossa Valley, the Riverina and South East Queensland where they found the regions suitable for wheat and dairy farming, the planting of vineyards and wine making. The Germans formed close communities and transformed the dry marginal environment into good farming land. The German Australians maintained strong cultural ties with their German heritage up until World War I.

By 1914 over 100,000 Germans lived in Australia and they were a well-established and liked community.  With the rising tension between the British and German Empires this began to change and German Australian communities often found themselves the subject of suspicion and animosity. When war broke out in 1914 this changed to outright hostility.

One of the first actions by Australia in the war was the sinking of the German light Cruiser SMS Emden in the Cocos Islands by HMAS Sydney.  The event created hysteria about possible German naval attack thus establishing immediately the cultural and national divisions within the community.

Quoted from a German migration history, website link below,  "Throughout Australia many German families changed their names to stop harassment from the government and a war mad community, German schools and churches were closed, German music was banned, German food was renamed, German place names were changed to British ones."  For example German Creek became Empire Bay.

In 1915, Germans and Austrians who were old enough to join the army were put into German Concentration Camps across the continent.  In New South Wales the three main internment camps were at Trial Bay Gaol, Berrima Gaol and Holsworthy Army Barracks.

In 2006, while researching my family history for a family reunion, I discovered that my great great grandfather, George R Whiting, leased and subdivided a large tract of land in Waterloo in 1879, then known as Victoria Town.  The precinct was bounded by Philip, Morehead, Wellington and Elizabeth streets and Whiting built several hundred workers’ cottages which were leased at low rents over a long term, perhaps what today we would call ‘affordable housing’.  Whiting named several of the streets including Clarendon, Portland, Beaumont and Hanover streets, and later reusing some of these same names when he similarly bought and subdivided land on Gore Hill in the 1880s.

During a history talk in 2014 on WWI and Waterloo by City of Sydney historian, Dr Lisa Murray raised the subject of anti-German sentiment and the renaming of Hanover Street to Walker Street after WWI.  At the time Dr Murray was writing a book on the history of Redfern, Alexandria and Waterloo.  During her talk I learned that it was common practice for the owner of the subdivision to name the streets.  I had always wondered why Hanover street was on the early map but had disappeared now when all the other streets were still the same.

During WWI the NSW government changed the name Germanton to Holbrook amid anti-German hysteria.  The town was originally called Ten Mile Creek in 1836. A German migrant, John Pabst, became the publican of the Woolpack Hotel in 1840 and the area became known as ‘the Germans’. By 1858 the name had evolved into the official name of Germanton.  In 1876 the name Germanton was officially gazetted, but on 24 August 1915 the town was renamed Holbrook in honour of Lt. Norman Douglas Holbrook, a decorated wartime submarine captain and winner of the Victoria Cross.  Similar name changes occurred in South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

For German Australia in WWI it meant sustained scrutiny, suspicion and persecution that eventually erased nearly all traces of the Australian- German community from the cultural landscape in a hysteric ethnic purge.  What remains are places and objects whose heritage is nearly forgotten.  Many families are aware of a German presence in their history, but the stigma of World War I and II has erased almost all traces of it from many families’ and community memory.

It should be noted that apart from Aboriginal Australians German Australians were among Australia's first patriots.

For further information: 
http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/enemyathome/german-australian-community/index.html
http://www.germanaustralia.com/e/ww1.htm


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Walker Street as it appears today, on the corner of Wellington Street, has only half a dozen single storey cottages and a handful of terrace houses that would have been built by George Whiting, however, many of the original houses still exist in the surrounding streets.
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National Reconciliation Week:  Douglas Grant, indigenous WWI veteran

5/6/2017

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Private Douglas Grant signed up in the 13th Battalion AIF like thousands of other young Australian men and in August 1916 he shipped off to the UK heading for the fighting on the Western Front in France.  In 1917 he was captured at Bullecourt by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a POW.

Recognising Grant as an intelligent man the Germans put him in charge of Red Cross parcels and in a letter to the Red Cross Douglas wrote requesting copies of the poems of Henry Lawson, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Robert Louis Stevenson, or some Australian life…. “something in which to pass away a few leisure moments which are generally filled with longing for home sweet home far across the sea.''

At the end of the war he was repatriated to the UK and then returned to Australia.  There is one other critical point of interest about Grant’s war story – Douglas Grant was an aborigine, a full blooded Ngadjonji man from Atherton Tableland in North Queensland.

I first heard about Australia's indigenous veterans while attending a family history conference in 2012.  One of the guest speakers was Brad Manera, the Senior Historian and Curator of the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park.  Brad spoke about the largely unacknowledged service of the many indigenous Australians who served in WWI.

Douglas Grant's story is one of about 1,000 Aboriginal men who served in World War I. These men came from all states and territories, and they served in all theatres of war including Gallipoli, the Western Front and Palestine. Like non-indigenous Anzacs, they too experienced the horrors of war, died on foreign soil, were maimed, suffered shell shock and lived in foreign POW camps.

Denied rights at home such as freedom of movement, the vote, control of their own finances and custody of their children, these indigenous veterans fought for Australia and the British Empire.  Even enlisting was not straight forward for Australia’s first people.  Grant was nearly denied the right to travel overseas until his adopted white father intervened with the NSW Aborigines’ Protection Board.  And after the war being a WWI veteran didn’t protect indigenous fathers from having their children removed from their custody. 

After the war Grant worked as a labourer at Mort’s Dock in Balmain and in Lithgow at the Small Arms Factory.  He lived in Tasmania, Victoria and NSW.  He was secretary of the local Lithgow RSL.  He also drank heavily and was admitted to the Callan Park Mental Hospital, where the repatriation cottages were a sanctuary for Grant and many other veterans.  Many of the buildings along the foreshore of Callan Park were built especially for repatriation soldiers, men who returned from war suffering from shell shock.

While residing there Douglas Grant designed and built, with the help of other veteran patients, a memorial for WWI veterans.  The Memorial is a scale replica of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and it is sited in the grounds of Callan Park, at the southern perimeter of the Waterfront Oval, in front of Repat Ward B, where Grant lived along with other WWI veterans.  The memorial was opened in 1931 on 4 August, the17th anniversary of the beginning of WWI, and ahead of the official opening of the Harbour Bridge in 1932.

According to K S Inglis in Sacred Places, War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, Douglas Grant was bitter about the fate of returned soldiers and Aborigines.  A friend of Grant’s remembers ''He became a sadder, progressively more dejected figure as each April the 25th went by.  One day, in the late '40s, I saw him sitting under a tree … 'I'm not wanted any more,' Grant told me. 'I don't want to join in. I don't belong. I've lived long enough'.''

Much of this week's post was sourced or copied from the information board at the Callan Park memorial site and the following sources: 

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/our-black-history-lest-we-forget-aboriginal-veterans-20130423-2icn5.html

http://www.callanpark.com/?p=477  Extract from Sacred Places, War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, K. S. Inglis assisted by Jan Brazier, Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, 1998, p243

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It is the only memorial created by patients, and it's plaque reads "Memorial erected by patients of B Ward in proud memory of those who made the Great Sacrifice".

Plaques to WWII servicemen were later added to the northern side of the memorial. This memorial was sacred to the patients and a place of remembrance where Anzac Day services were held regularly for many years.

In recent years the RSL has shown little interest in this wartime memorial and it was not until Friends of Callan Park agitated for its safety and preservation that active steps were taken to secure it.

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